In a letter exclusively sited by Pointblanknews.com dated September 6th, 2021 and addressed to the interim administrator with the Director of Finance in attention, the firm stated that the letter became expedient, as an interested party, to “straighten the records on some of the issues being paraded in the public space”
While the Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN) had disclosed that the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) received over N6 trillion in the last 19 years, the external auditors insisted that this was not true based on the records at their disposal.
Presenting their findings, the auditors said “This assertion is grossly at variance with the records from all relevant sources including the Audited Financial Statements of the Commission over the relevant years of reference.
“As the External Auditors to the Commission for the past couple of years, we provide hereunder the breakdown of aggregate receipts by the Commission from year 2000 to 2019 which stood at a total sum of N2.395 trillion:
It summed up that “it is not unlikely that, unrelated figures were inadvertently included in the aggregate” to arrive at the N6 trillion earlier presented as monies so recieved by the commission.
Again, while the Justice Minister said the execution of 13,777 projects in the Niger Delta were compromised, the external auditors said were “not yet privy to the sums of money attached to the over 13,000 abandoned projects said to have been discovered and allegedly reported by the Forensic Auditors”
Also, the external auditors noted with some reservation, part of the information said to be contained in the Forensic Audit report to the effect that, the Commission maintained over 200 bank accounts.
It clarified that from the information available to it, “the Commission maintained a total of 24 bank accounts at the Headquarters level and 1 UBA account by each state offices making a total of 33 as at December 31st, 2014.
“It is also important to note that, with the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA); the banks accounts have been collapsed into only (4) four as at December 31st 2015.”
The external auditors however recommended that “a realistic date for the forensic audit should have been considered in order to achieve the best possible result.”
It also suggested that a realistic classification of “stalled projects ” be defined so as to avoid misinformation to the public.